There is No Harm in You Alone
by Ivory Novelist
Summary: Post Season One. Rust is in bad shape, emotionally and psychologically. Marty wants to help him. They start living together, and their friendship deepens. No slash. But there may be a queerplatonic friendship.
1. Chapter 1

AN: I have no idea if I'm going to continue this or when I would or how long it'll be if I do.

There isn't going to be any sex or romance in this story, as per usual. Marty and Rust may or may not end up in a queerplatonic friendship. We'll see.

* * *

Chapter 1

* * *

What starts out as a temporary stay becomes permanent. Rust's body is slow to heal, and by the time his stitches come out, he's been living at Marty's place for two months. They grow on each other as roommates, the way they grew on each other as cops and again as private investigators—gradual, almost without their noticing. They've both lived alone for so long that suddenly having company is a small irritation and a comfort they didn't know they wanted.

As Rust gets stronger, he starts tagging along with Marty to the firm and helping out with cases, just for something to do. Their names were not released to the public, in the media coverage of Errol Childress, but word always gets around in Louisiana. Marty sees a spike in his case submissions, and he can use the extra hand. Most of the work is laidback stuff, but he likes it that way. If Rust doesn't, he keeps it to himself.

They survive on take-out and frozen meals. Marty buys another TV tray, and Rust doesn't complain about what Marty watches. Rust doesn't say much at all, those first couple months. He's quiet and withdrawn. He barely smiles. The lack of his philosophy bullshit is a loud silence that Marty unconsciously tries to fill with his own talk, his own half-hearted attempts to be funny or cheerful.

Rust takes the sleeping pills his doctor prescribed him, and he doesn't drink until about six weeks after he left the hospital because they warned him that his body won't handle alcohol well until he's fully recovered. Not to mention mixing booze with his pain killers is a bad idea.

It occurs to Marty that there's something wrong with Rust that's got nothing to do with the stabbing. That crying he did in the parking lot at Lafayette General was just a glimpse of it. Marty's never been good at emotions, but he's pretty sure that whatever's got Rust so down goes beyond a near death experience and missing his daughter. Marty just can't, for the life of him, figure out what it is. He might ask Rust to tell him, if the other man wasn't such an evasive son of a bitch. And hell, who's to say that Rust knows what's going on with himself anyway? For all that intellectualizing, Marty realizes that Rust's never been good at emotions either.

They're men, after all.

* * *

"Let's assess the damage," Marty says, when Rust comes out of the hospital after getting his stitches removed. Marty's been waiting by the car for him in the bright May sunshine.

Rust lifts up his t-shirt. The scar's dead center in his belly, about four inches long, a raised ridge of hard skin pink and inflamed.

"Whew. That's a doozy."

Rust goes around to the passenger side of the car. "Need to stop by the pharmacy," he says, in the monotone he's taken to speaking in. "Refill my pain meds."

They get into the car, and Marty says, glancing at him, "You still need em?"

Rust nods.

They pick up the pills, and go through the drive-thru at McDonald's. Rust asks Marty to stop by a gas station convenience store for beer.

"Fuckin tired of tip toeing around my own stomach," he says.

Marty buys a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, too.

* * *

Not a week after that, Marty wakes up in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. The house is pitch dark. He lies there on his back for a minute, listening, until he hears the faint sound of Rust breathing hard in the bedroom. Marty's still sleeping on the living room sofa, used to it now after letting Rust have his bed while he recovered.

He watches as Rust's silhouette emerges from the bedroom corridor and quietly passes through the living room to the kitchen. He listens to Rust light a cigarette, then sits up and swings his legs over the side of the sofa.

"Rust?" he says, the sound of his own voice too loud for three in the morning.

"Go back to sleep, Marty," Rust says, his voice strange and husky.

Marty gets up and goes to him, keeping the lights off on instinct. The end of Rust's Camel glows orange in the darkness, his shape tall and lean as Marty learned it back in '95, the way partners learn each other's body. Rust was always thin, but now he's damn near emaciated, despite Marty's best efforts to feed him.

"You all right?" Marty says.

Rust doesn't answer.

Marty sighs, hands on his hips. "You want some tea or something?"

Rust shakes his head. "No," he says. "Just didn't want to smoke in the bedroom."

"Why'd you quit taking your pills?" says Marty.

"Tired of em. Speaking of which, you can go back to the couch. I don't need a babysitter."

"Jesus, you're an ass." Marty turns around and takes a seat at the kitchen table that he and Rust never eat on. "I can't sleep over there when you're standing in my fucking kitchen in the dark."

Rust turns away from him, facing the living room, taking away the light of his cigarette. The smoke rises white and visible, softening the air around him in a haze. The smell's become a part of Marty's life again, stinking up his clothes and his car, and he can't say he minds it.

Rust takes a breath and exhales like he's got a weight on him too heavy to live with. It reminds Marty that in his whole life, he's never met anyone who can hold onto pain the way Rust can—like water in a sponge that you can't measure until you squeeze it out.

Marty doesn't know what to say to him. Doesn't know how to help him or if Rust can be helped. He wants to believe that Rust can because at heart, Marty's an optimist. And damned if he knows why, but he cares about the son of a bitch. He cares and he values whatever nameless thing they have between them, a friendship they can't talk about because that's not what they do, not who they are.

Marty stares at the black shape of Rust's back and remembers that night Rust came to dinner at his and Maggie's old home. Remembers how drunk and awful sad Rust was, like he might break down and cry any second, and Marty didn't ask him why because he didn't want to know. Figured Rust didn't want to tell. They were partners then but not friends. Not yet.

"What am I doing here, Marty?" Rust says. "I should go home. Let you get on with your life. We finished the job."

Marty blinks at him, watching the smoke drift toward him over Rust's shoulder like an invitation. It hits him as if there hadn't been any signs. Detective's curse. "I let you leave, you're going to go back to that bar and kill yourself," he says.

Rust doesn't answer or turn around.

"After everything you've fuckin been through?"

"No reason not to," says Rust, after a pause.

And what the fuck is Marty supposed to say to that? It's true. Rust's life is a wasteland, and he's been hanging on by a thin fucking thread for too long.

But Marty's spent too many years being selfish to quit now.

He gets up out of his chair and crosses the kitchen slow and careful, unsure what he's going to do when he reaches the other man and if Rust will let him, whatever it is. He stops just behind him, eyes roaming over the slopes of Rust's shoulders. He lifts his hands, hesitates, then steps in closer. Slips his arms around Rust's waist and presses his hands to Rust's belly.

Rust stiffens but doesn't break away or try to turn around. "What are you doing?" he says.

"Trying to help," says Marty. He feels around Rust's midsection until he finally hikes up Rust's t-shirt and lays his hands on the other man's bare skin, covering the scar that Rust'll take to his grave. Marty gets closer, hugging Rust from behind with a gentle hesitation—like he doesn't know where to put himself in relation to the other man, like he has no experience holding another human being outside of a sexual context. "I'm not coming onto you. You just look so fucking lonely all the time. Fuck."

Rust doesn't say anything. He stands there in Marty's awkward embrace and finishes his cigarette. His skin's cold under Marty's hands, and the scar feels ugly.

"I wouldn't do it like you're thinking," Rust says, after a while, the beginnings of emotion in his tone. "I'm just gonna—go back to drinking. Figure out what the fuck to do next."

"If it takes you years of hard liquor or whatever nasty shit you were hooked on back in the day, it don't mean it ain't suicide," says Marty. "Eatin your gun would be kinder."

"There's never been any room in my life for kindness, Marty."

"Well, maybe if you'd stop being so God damn convinced of your own misery, you'd at least feel a little better."

Rust goes silent again, bracing his hands against the edge of the counter in front of him. He hangs his head and breathes. Marty keeps his arms tucked in close to Rust's waist, chin touching Rust's left shoulder, hands still on his belly. He feels the breath move in and out of Rust's body until the muscles clench all of a sudden.

Marty waits for them to relax again, but they don't. It takes him a couple minutes to realize that Rust's crying or trying not to cry.

On cue, the leaner man sniffs loud and lets out a strangled, gasping breath. Like he's trying to hold in a sob.

"Shit," Marty says, more to himself. "Rust—"

"I can't keep doing this," says Rust, voice all clawed up. "I was supposed to die in Carcosa. I was countin on it. There's nothing for me here."

His breath hitches and his body jerks like he's been stabbed all over again, right there in his belly. Feels like his pain's come to the surface, seeping out of his pores in his sweat. He's vibrating now, not even trembling, the twitch in his muscles so tight and small that Marty's afraid Rust might actually split open.

Marty takes his hands off Rust's belly and turns him around, drapes one arm around Rust's shoulders, and walks him into the living room. He sits them down on the sofa and keeps his arm around Rust, who hunches into himself and toward Marty, covering his face with both hands.

Marty doesn't know what to say, so he just pulls in closer and rests his head against Rust's. He can feel the heat and moisture of Rust's tears on his face so close to his own. It's been a long time since Marty directed any thoughts to God deliberately, but he finds himself thinking, _What am I supposed to do with this man? You tell me what to do. _

"You're not going anywhere," he tells Rust, talking real gentle, as if to a small child. "You're going to live here and work with me, until you get past this."

"Why do you care?" Rust says, his voice rough and shaky. "All I've ever been was a pain in your ass."

"That's true. But you're also my friend."

Rust sniffs and shudders and leans into Marty, hands in his lap now, and Marty closes his eyes, their foreheads touching. Without thinking about it, he raises his hand to Rust's face, knuckles to the other man's gaunt cheek, now wet with Rust's tears. He tilts and turns his head and kisses the corner of Rust's mouth, the contact so light it almost doesn't happen.

"What are you doing?" Rust asks, sounding too fragile.

"I don't know," Marty says. "I don't want to make out with you, swear to God. I just want you to be okay, and I don't know how the fuck to make that happen. 'm sorry."

Rust's quiet for a long beat. He doesn't try to pull away from Marty. He sits right where he is, huddled into him. "Maybe I should take my sleeping pills," he says eventually.

"No shit."

"Will you come with me?"

"Where?"

"The bedroom."

"Rust—"

"I'm not coming onto you either. I'm just tired of being alone, fuck, I'm tired of it. It's your bed anyway."

Part of Marty's weirded out by the idea of sleeping next to another man, even one he knows as well as Rust, but at this point, they've gone far enough into weird emotional territory that Marty can't see how it'd be worth it to turn Rust down. He gets up and coaxes Rust by the elbow. The two of them go down the short corridor to the bedroom, and Rust finds the bottle of sleeping pills on the night table. The two of them lie down, and Rust curls up on his side facing away from Marty.

Marty contemplates it for half a minute before he moves. He turns on his side and throws his arm over Rust's waist. "It's going to be okay," he says.

"You don't have to—"

"Shut up."

Rust does.


	2. Chapter 2

AN: Yeah, so as a heads up, Marty and Rust's relationship in this story is queerplatonic. It's not romantic, nor is it heading for romance. They're not going to have sex. Don't know how long the fic will be or where it'll go by the time it's done, but I just want to make the nature of their friendship clear.

* * *

Chapter 2

* * *

He hates the sleeping pills, but when he doesn't take them, the nightmares come. The winding maze of Carcosa, like a physical manifestation of Errol Childress' mind. The empty clothes of his victims hanging on a line in the wind. The two children locked up on Ledoux's property. The girl screaming at the hospital. The knife sinking into his own belly, blood gushing hot, and his killer's crazed eyes. The faces of hundreds of dead women, brutalized and murdered, wearing that look of relief. Marie Fontenot on the snuff tape. His daughter Sofia under that car, her tricycle capsized.

He'll wake up sweaty, heartbeat fast and erratic, body flooded with fear and adrenaline. He sits up, swings his legs over his side of the bed, and reaches for the whiskey bottle he keeps on the night table. Sometimes, he sits there for a long while, trying to shake off the images. Sometimes, he'll get up and walk around the house in the dark and smoke a cigarette. Unless it's already close to dawn, he won't start working or reading, mostly to avoid waking Marty.

A night of that and he'll go back on the pills for a few days, maybe even a week. He gets stubborn once and goes three nights in a row without them, sleeping two or three hours at a time and dreaming again. Those ten years between falling out with Marty and reuniting with him, Rust stayed drunk all the time in part because it helped him sleep when he wanted to. He knew sooner or later, it was going to kill him, but he wasn't interested in living longer than it took him to find the Yellow King anyway.

Now, here he is. And Marty won't let him commit suicide or plummet back into his alcoholism.

"You know what you need?" Marty says one morning, as he scrambles eggs.

Rust's sitting at the kitchen table, smoking over coffee. "What's that?"

"Therapy."

Rust can't even bother to laugh. He just blinks lazy and looks away, sucking on his cigarette.

"Despite what you might think, Rust, you been through some serious shit, and it's wearing on you. It is not just a feature of your personality. At this point, you prolly have a heavy dose of PTSD and you're just real good at keeping the more aggressive side of it under control."

"You get a degree in psychology while I was away and neglect to mention it?" Rust says.

Marty holds up a middle finger without turning around from the stove. They lapse into silence until he brings Rust a plate of eggs and dry toast.

"The way you're living is not sustainable," he says.

Rust looks up at him, makes eye contact, then looks down at his plate and starts picking at his food. Marty sits across from him with his own eggs and toast and orange juice.

They've been sharing the bed ever since that first time. Most nights, they don't touch, at least one of them on his side with his back to the other, but Rust's woken Marty up twice after particularly rough nightmares and asked him to hold onto him. Calms Rust down, at least, even if he doesn't sleep any better.

"PTSD is the sanest response to what I've experienced," Rust says, after a few minutes, his voice deep and gravelly. "And in any event, nothing can erase those experiences or their meaning. Sure as hell not talk."

"Alcohol can't either, but that didn't stop you from trying, did it?" says Marty. "I'm pretty sure any doctor who's worth a damn would write you a prescription for psych meds after one visit. Those should help."

"Just what I need." Rust sips from his coffee mug. "More drugs."

* * *

He grew his hair long and quit shaving when he was in Alaska. Depression, laziness, distraction, blending in with the fishermen up there. Whatever the reason was, he got used to the ponytail and mustache. Even had a beard there for a while, before coming back to Louisiana. He knows it ages him, but he doesn't care. He's been past giving a shit about his looks for a long time.

But he's looking at himself in Marty's bathroom mirror one morning and realizes that he's going to live. He paid off his debt. He survived. Some part of him's been thinking ever since he broke out of the hospital that he would crawl back to his room behind the bar and die like a fly slipped down a whiskey bottle, but the longer he stays with Marty, the less and less likely that self-destruction is. If he really wanted to leave, he could. The fact that he hasn't, that he isn't even looking for a job or place to stay of his own, must mean he has no intention of leaving—either Marty's house or this shithole world.

Well, fuck.

He tells Marty he's taking the day off from private investigating. Drives himself to a barber's shop that afternoon. Walks out clean shaven, short-haired, and about ten years younger.

Marty grins when he comes home and sees. "I'll be damned," he says. "You actually look like a human being."

* * *

It's pouring rain one night, and Rust wakes up in the bed alone. Two thirty-two in the morning. He wasn't having a nightmare, but he feels uneasy, like maybe if he falls asleep again, something nasty'll come for him. He lies there on his back and listens to the rain for several minutes, then gets up and pads into the living room, where Marty fell asleep on the couch again. The TV's been turned off this time, but there have been a few nights where Rust had to shut it off after waking up from his own restless sleep. He's wondered if it's an old habit Marty developed out of loneliness: filling the silence of his solitude with the television.

Marty's wheezing on his back, not quite snoring, and Rust sits in the recliner adjacent to the couch, looking at the other man's form in the darkness. He could try sleeping here, or he could take his pills and not get out of bed until past ten, nine to five work day be damned. Either way, Marty would probably let it slide. He's been more accommodating than anyone would believe, of Rust's peculiarities.

Rust doesn't know how long he sits there or when exactly he starts to doze off, but he wakes up again when Marty stirs, snuffles a loud breath, and says, "Jesus. What are you doing there?"

"Trying to sleep."

"Did the bed catch fire?"

Rust doesn't answer.

Marty sighs, now sitting up with his feet on the carpet. Rust looks at his bent silhouette and considers offering him the bed and staying out here on the couch or in the recliner. Maybe if he smokes a cigarette, it'll calm him down some.

"Was it a dream?" Marty says.

"No," says Rust, after a pause. "You know I've had insomnia since you met me. Dreams or no dreams."

Thunder cracks and rumbles outside, the rain unrelenting against the windows. The two men sit in silence for a few minutes.

"I thought about you sometimes," Rust says. "In Alaska."

"Yeah? Out of guilt?"

The truth is, Rust did feel guilty about letting Maggie seduce him. He understood pretty quick why she did it and how Marty had pushed her to it. By the time he showed up to the office, that day he and Marty fought, Rust's anger had worn off, and he couldn't even bring himself to resent Maggie. He was doggin' on himself for being stupid and weak enough to let her have her way. He was in a bad place that night when she showed up, drunk and high and pissed off and twisted up about the Yellow King. But Rust has never been a man who makes excuses. Intellectually, he knew that Marty and Maggie's split had been a long time coming, but he lay awake at night more than once, after leaving Louisiana, thinking about their divorce and their kids and his hand in the whole mess. He quit CID not just because he knew he'd lost Marty's friendship but because he didn't want to watch the Hart family rupture, feeling that burn of his own guilt long after the divorce was finalized.

"I thought about what you might be doing," Rust tells Marty. "How you got to living after... How you were holding up."

Marty's quiet for minute.

Rust itches for a cigarette, but he left them in the bedroom and doesn't want to quit this conversation yet.

"Thought about you too," says Marty.

In the end, Marty goes back to sleep on the couch, and Rust smokes in the recliner, listening to the rain, looking at Marty's lines lit by the glow of Rust's cigarette. Rust catches a few more hours rest sitting there and makes the coffee come morning.

* * *

Five or six weeks after Rust cuts his hair, Marty gets invited to a tailgate party and drags Rust with him. The Saints are playing the Falcons in Georgia, and the party hosts reserved a public park and a big projector screen to watch the game. All kinds of people show up, families with small kids and teenagers with their friends and older couples and groups of guys who left their wives and girlfriends at home. The backs of their SUVs and oversized pick-up trucks overflow with beer and cheap liquor. They cook burgers, hot dogs, and chicken breasts on the park grills, the smell of the meat and the charcoal filling the cool air. Bunch of people smoke cigarettes. Rust can smell marijuana mingled in with all the other scents but can't tell where it's coming from.

Marty introduces him to his buddies, some of whom are cops at CID and others who he met after quitting the force. They all look at Rust with a hint of suspicion and a certain amount of respect (all of them know who he is and what he did in Carcosa) and don't go out of their way to make him talk. He stands around with a beer in his hand and doesn't bother trying to look interested in their conversations. His eyes track his surroundings, sometimes seeing what's there and sometimes glazing over as he thinks or doesn't think at all.

He sits in his truck bed during the game, watching the people more than the screen. It's a rowdy crowd. He's had just enough to drink and he's in the right mood, that they don't irritate him with their noise and their numbers. Seeing Marty getting worked up right along with them almost makes Rust laugh a couple times.

The Falcons win by a hair's margin. There's the inevitable collective groaning, cursing, and tire kicking. Everybody packs up and goes home. Rust drives and Marty sits next to him in shotgun, the wind in his face through the open window, surprisingly quiet for how drunk he is. Rust's not sober, but he's all right to get them home safe. He's driven drunker than this before, without incident.

Marty stumbles his way inside once Rust parks in their driveway, and Rust's right behind him with the cooler they brought, full of leftover alcohol. Marty decides he wants to watch the game replays on ESPN, so they plop on the sofa together, set the cooler on the coffee table in front of them, and start putting away more beer. Marty comments on the game all over again, slurring his words, losing track of his sentences from time to time. Rust lights up another cigarette and listens without speaking, figuring what the hell, he gets drunk enough he'll be able to sleep through the night without pills.

He doesn't know how much time has passed by the time he finishes his third can of Lone Star, but his vision's cloudy and he's sitting on the couch like his body might melt into it. He half-expected Marty to pass out right there next to him, but the other man's awake and staring at the TV with bloodshot eyes, finally quiet.

"Man, I wish we had a joint right now," Marty says.

Rust blinks at him, the motion sluggish. "You smoke pot?"

"In college. Maggie made me quit before I married her."

"Pot's stupid," says Rust.

"Well, if being smart means you fuck around with cocaine and meth and shit, then I guess I don't mind being stupid."

Rust feels something in response to that, but he doesn't know what it is. It occurs to him that he's so drunk, he can't think—which is pretty God damn drunk for Rust. His mouth's dry, and he works his tongue around in it, the texture like raw cotton and the taste a gross mix of stale tobacco and beer. He looks down at his hand and sees he's still holding a cigarette stub in between two fingers that he forgot all about. He takes one last drag, then leans forward to put the stub out in the ashtray on the table.

"Rust," Marty says.

Rust doesn't answer.

"You concern me."

"Why?" says Rust.

"Why not?"

They look at each other.

"Go to therapy," says Marty.

"Fuck you," Rust says, because his brain is no condition to actually argue. "No."

Marty sighs and closes his eyes, hangs his head and presses the heels of his hands into his brow.

Rust glances at the TV, then back at him. "You're not much better'n me, you know."

"You make me look like the fuckin poster child of mental health, Rust. Why do you think I keep you around?"

A jolt of loneliness hits Rust in his solar plexus, hard and cold enough that he almost shivers. Probably just the booze but he's drunk enough now that he speaks without thinking. "Marty."

"What?"

Rust reaches over and curls his hand into Marty's pant leg.

That gets Marty's attention. He looks at Rust and says, "You okay?"

Rust closes his eyes and breathes. It's loneliness and surrealism: the unbelievability of his own life, like he's been on a drug trip all this time and he's finally coming out of it and his own existence doesn't feel completely true.

"Rust."

Marty covers Rust's hand with his own. It's warm.

Rust opens his eyes and begins to look toward Marty, a tightness in his chest.

Marty leans in, lifts his free hand to cup Rust's jaw, and kisses him. There's no heat or hunger to it. What comes to Rust's mind is comfort.

When they break apart, Rust says, "What are you doing?"

Marty swallows, eyes still closed, then half-lidded. "Looked like you needed it," he says.

"I do."

"I'm not gay."

"Me neither."

"So if you're thinking this leads to a blowjob or me fucking you..."

"I'm not."

Marty swallows again and takes a breath. "God, I'm drunk," he says. He drops his hand away from Rust's jaw, then rests it on Rust's neck.

That soothes Rust. The warmth and weight of his friend's hand.

"I don't want to fuck," Rust says, murmuring, not even fully aware of what he's saying. "Just like being close. To something."

Marty's nodding. "Yeah."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Marty leans in again and Rust meets him. Their kiss is soft, almost tender, their mouths mostly closed. Their faces touch just above Marty's left eyebrow and Rust's right. Marty slides his hand down to Rust's belly, covering the scar. Rust lays his hand over Marty's and holds it there. The kiss drags on until they angle out of it and press their foreheads together, resting.

Eventually, they make it to the bedroom, collapsing on the mattress with their clothes on, passing out as soon as they're horizontal.


	3. Chapter 3

AN: Finally an update. So this friendship between Rust and Marty is definitely queerplatonic, not romantic or heading in a sexual direction. Just FYI.

* * *

Chapter 3

* * *

Marty wakes up the next day alone in his bed. It takes him a few minutes to orient himself, remember getting drunk, the football game, Rust. "Shit," he says out loud, sitting up and stumbling to the bedroom doorway. He's got a hangover headache that hits him as soon as he's upright, leans heavy against the doorjamb before making it to the master bathroom and shutting himself inside. After he uses the toilet, he looks in the mirror: yesterday's clothes rumpled, eyes unfocused, prickly face in need of shaving, what little hair he has left messy, skin around his eyes puffy.

He washes his face with cold water, brushes his teeth, and smoothes his hair. He lingers in the bathroom for a few minutes, nervous about whether or not Rust remembers last night. It suddenly occurs to Marty that he might go out there and find Rust gone, possessions and truck and all, because the man would rather go back to his room behind that dismal dive bar than live with a guy he falsely assumes wants to fuck him. Marty thinks, unless he was too wasted to tell fact from fiction, that Rust was all right with that little kiss of theirs. But everybody's got second thoughts sober about what they did drunk.

Marty can barely believe the twisted knot in his stomach as he creeps down the bedroom corridor, how much he wants Rust to stay and be his friend. What kind of pitiful life has he made for himself, that he's depending on Rust Cohle for his happiness? Then again, fuck that, Rust's a good person and always has been; even his bullshit is the kind Marty can tolerate.

He stands just before the threshold between corridor and living room for at least a minute, holding his breath, afraid Rust's still here and afraid he isn't.

He walks out into the front of the house. Checks the living room and the kitchen with its dining nook. Empty. No note.

Marty wilts. He could go out and check to see if the red pick-up's still in the driveway, but why would it be? Rust's not one for long walks through suburbia.

The front door cracks open, and he turns around to see his partner walking in with a plastic bag of groceries in each hand, cigarette in his mouth.

"Shit, man," Rust says around the cigarette, sunshine flooding in around him. "Somebody kill your dog?"

"I don't have a dog," says Marty, smiling because he can't help himself.

Rust knocks the door shut behind him with his foot and proceeds into the kitchen. Marty catches a whiff of cigarette smoke as he passes by. Rust sets the bags down on the kitchen counter and takes the cigarette in his fingers.

"Best cure for a mild hangover's a big breakfast," he says. "There's coffee in the pot for you."

Marty beelines for the brewer and pours himself a mug. "Didn't expect you to be gone so early," he says.

"It's after ten," says Rust, cigarette giving off smoke in his fingers as he digs out the food stuffs from the bags.

Marty almost drinks his entire mug of coffee, side-eyeing Rust, before he gets up the courage to say, "Listen. About last night... we were both pretty shitfaced. I'm sorry if I did something I shouldn't have."

Rust glances at him, arranging Pillsbury biscuit dough on a baking tray on the counter next to the stove. He puts his hands on his hips, waiting for the oven to climb to the set temperature. "If you're talking about that kiss—" he drawls, "I ain't mad."

"Good. I didn't—I mean, I'm not—I was drunk, is all."

"Yeah. But unless something changed in the ten year interim, I don't know you to be a man who kisses other men no matter how drunk you are. Haven't been that kinda man myself either."

Marty doesn't know what to say to that. It's true. The thought of kissing men makes him queasy. But if he's honest with himself, he didn't mind kissing Rust. He blushes a little, embarrassed. He second guesses his sexuality just a little a bit. Tries to picture having sex with the other man, but it's uncomfortable, not arousing.

Marty realizes he's been quietly staring at Rust the last few minutes, lost in thought, but Rust just keeps on minding the bacon and the eggs on the stove. Marty drains the last of his coffee and glances away.

Rust clears his throat a little and says, "I'm no expert on this shit, but I think sometimes, a kiss is just a kiss. No big implications behind it."

Marty's looking at the tile and his bare feet, empty mug held at his side. "Look, Rust—I'm not gay, and I know you aren't either. I apologize. Really. It won't happen again."

Rust doesn't reply for a moment, then flicks his eyes onto Marty and back to the skillet where he's turning turkey sausage next to the bacon. "I wouldn't mind it happening again. If it doesn't, that's fine too."

Marty looks up at him and blinks. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

Now, Marty has no idea what the hell to make of Rust. It's almost comforting to know that can still be true after all these years.

"You're not wrong," Rust says, after Marty's been speechless a bit. "I'm not gay any more than you are. Not even bisexual. Tell you the truth, I was never a big fan of sex, even with women. I'm old enough now, I feel like I don't need an excuse to go without it. I don't want it, so I won't have it. But like I said—sometimes, kissing's just kissing."

Everything about Rust, so far, has been casual and laid-back. But he looks at Marty now with a subtle anxiety in his eyes. He's made himself vulnerable, and he can't take it back.

The concept of kissing someone he doesn't want to fuck and who doesn't want to fuck him is as foreign to Marty as eating grub worms. But as he stands there staring at Rust, he realizes that he's open to experimenting with it.

Rust switches off the heat on the oven and the stove. "Well?" he says. "You got thoughts on the matter or are we gonna drop it?"

Marty swallows, his mouth dry and his body tense. "What did you like about it? The kiss?"

Rust slides the bacon, sausage, and eggs onto two plates and after a minute says, "Thought I told you. It's nice feeling close to something. Someone. I haven't been in a long time."

Marty can agree with him there. He's had plenty of sex and kissed plenty of women since he and Maggie split over ten years ago, but he's learned that feeling close to someone doesn't automatically come along with being physical. He's closer to Rust than he is to anyone else now, and maybe that's why sharing a bed and touching feels comfortable instead of awkward or wrong.

Rust sticks his left hand into an oven mitt and pulls the biscuit tray out of the oven, setting it down on the stove. He turns and takes the butter spread out of the refrigerator, then moves the two plates of food to the dining table.

On his way back across the kitchen, Marty stops him, grabbing his forearm. They look at each other, Marty unsure and Rust as unflappable as ever.

"It is nice being close to someone," says Marty. "Which is why I don't want to screw this up again. Me and you. I just want to do the right thing, for once."

"Shit, Marty," Rust says. "Last thing I need is for you to make our friendship about redeeming yourself for decades of moral weakness. I'm tired of right and wrong. All I want is a little bit of something good before I die."

The words hurt Marty, and he doesn't hide that on his face and in his eyes. It hurts to think about Rust dying, so soon after they survived Carcosa. The sound of exhaustion, depression, a lifetime of disappointed desperation for relief in Rust's voice hurts. His life hasn't been happy for a long time, but Marty can look back and see that he had his share of good years, blessings he wasted and gambled away. Rust, on the other hand, wasn't exaggerating when he told Marty that night at the office that his life's been a cycle of violence and degradation. He would never try to cast off responsibility for his choices, but the fact is, most of Rust's suffering wasn't of his own making. He's the product of it—but he didn't deserve it.

Marty wants to help him now. Wants to make the rest of Rust Cohle's life, whatever's left of it, better than his past.

"You got that look again," Rust says, voice raspy and low. "Like someone just shot the dog you don't have."

Marty steps up to him and wraps his arms around the leaner man.

Rust hugs him back after a few beats.

They hold onto each other for a little while, until Rust says, "Food's gettin' cold."

Marty pulls back from him, hands grasping Rust's arms above the elbows. "I'll kiss you again, if you want, you sad son of a bitch."

That gets a little smile out of Rust.

"You gonna have to drink half a liquor store first?" he says.

"No," says Marty, looking into Rust's slate blue eyes. "You know, as fucked up as it is, I think you're the only real best friend I've had since I was a boy."

"My condolences."

Marty lays both hands on Rust's cheeks, rough and leathery with age and Alaska, and kisses him. Closed lips touching closed lips, soft and not quite tender. Marty can barely taste the coffee and cigarette on Rust's breath. Loneliness shudders through him like an old skin he hasn't been able to shed. Rust leans into the kiss. They're close and warm, the house silent around them. It's comfort. That's the feeling Marty gets. Not exactly safe—safety's pretty far out of reach for them—but comfortable, like sliding your hand into an old leather glove that fits just right.

When they pull apart, Marty looks at him.

"Not the worst thing you've ever done?" says Rust.

"Not by a long shot," Marty replies.

They eat their breakfast without talking much. Rust smokes another cigarette at the table, and Marty doesn't complain.

If they spend the afternoon tucked into bed, kissing and napping and holding onto each other, well—no one'll ever know.


End file.
